Gradually, Then Suddenly: Mastercard, BNY Mellon, Amazon, Twitter Poised to Join the Bitcoin Party

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 786 Ratings

🗓️ 12 February 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of The Breakdown, NLW looks at a slew of news from corporates getting into the bitcoin and crypto space, including: Twitter CFO exploring bitcoin treasury holdings and payments to employees and vendors Mastercard announcing crypto coming to payment rails in 2021 Amazon revealing its digital currency plans in a series of job posts BNY Mellon, the world’s largest asset custodian, opening new digital asset business Why Christine Lagarde says central banks won’t buy bitcoin anytime soon. -- Earn up to 12% APY on Bitcoin, Ethereum, USD, EUR, GBP, Stablecoins & more. Get started at nexo.io -- Enjoying this content? SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/podcast/id1438693620?at=1000lSDb Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/538vuul1PuorUDwgkC8JWF?si=ddSvD-HST2e_E7wgxcjtfQ Google: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9ubHdjcnlwdG8ubGlic3luLmNvbS9yc3M= Follow on Twitter: NLW: https://twitter.com/nlw Breakdown: https://twitter.com/BreakdownNLW The Breakdown is produced and distributed by CoinDesk.com

Transcript

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0:00.0	BNY Mellon is the world's largest custodian bank. It holds for customers 41 trillion in assets.
0:08.5	Today, it announced that it was rolling out a new digital custody unit focused on digital assets, including cryptos.
0:15.4	If you had any doubt about whether banks were going to be falling over themselves to be the first in line to actually offer their customers' crypto services, I think that's now pretty well cleared up.
0:26.7	Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW.
0:30.9	It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world.
0:37.7	The Breakdown is sponsored by neo.io and produced and distributed by CoinDesk.
0:44.3	What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, February 11th, and today we are talking about MasterCart,
0:51.4	BNY Mellon, Amazon, Twitter, all joining the Bitcoin party. So the big question after
0:59.3	Elon and Tesla's Monday announcement about their $1.5 billion Bitcoin buy was what the
1:06.0	follow-on impact would be. Would there be a wave of other CEOs racing to join in? Would there be calls from
1:12.9	board members asking executives what their Bitcoin plan was? J.P. Morgan's strategist tried to throw a little
1:19.4	cold water on this notion. A Bloomberg article from yesterday was titled J.P. Morgan sees Tesla
1:25.8	Bitcoin bet as too bold for others to follow.
1:29.2	Importantly, their point wasn't about narrative. They acknowledged that this was a highly
1:33.1	influential narrative. It was about real volatility and what volatility corporate officers
1:38.3	were willing to deal with. Here's the way that Bloomberg put it. Corporate treasury portfolios
1:42.9	are typically stuffed with bank deposits, money market funds, and short-dated bonds, meaning that annualized volatility
1:48.8	or the range of swings during the course of a year hovers around 1%. Adding a 1% Bitcoin
1:54.0	allocation, quote, would cause a big increase in the volatility of the overall portfolio.
1:59.0	Such an allocation could mean the portfolio's volatility
2:01.4	rises to 8% due to Bitcoin's 80% annualized volatility, they said. Well, pour one out for those guys,
2:08.5	because the news since then has been way more flood than trickle. First of all, let's talk about
	...

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